


Lover, Tell Me

by byjillianmaria



Series: Back Into Time [2]
Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon Fix-It, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23100106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byjillianmaria/pseuds/byjillianmaria
Summary: Orpheus doesn't remember. But like he always does, he tries.
Relationships: Eurydice/Orpheus (Hadestown)
Series: Back Into Time [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660318
Comments: 6
Kudos: 68





	Lover, Tell Me

**Author's Note:**

> SO I GUESS THIS IS A SERIES NOW. This probably won't make much sense if you don't read "The Path to Paradise."

_ “All I know is you’re someone I have always known.” _

The first time he tells her this, there’s no shortage of awe in his voice. She talks him out of that quickly, the giddy idol worship that left him with  _ la _ ’s on his lips but not much else. That love had been exciting, but ephemeral, like smoke from a blown out candle, impossible to catch and hold. What they have now is more solid, more stable.

Even so, he has to admit that sometimes she seems… different. Sometimes she gets a look in her eyes that makes her seem more like Hermes than any of the humans they’re friends with. Even the others who followed them out of Hadestown don’t get that look. She seems so much more than human, in those moments.

This is not one of those moments.

She’s curled up on the bed in the gray almost-dawn light, rocking with her face buried in her knees. She’s breathing fast in a way that’s familiar to him, in a way that makes his heart break a little for her even half-asleep because he  _ knows _ how that feels. He pushes himself up, cautiously placing a hand on her shoulder. “Eurydice.”

She lets out a high noise, a keening sound that doesn’t quite have the breath to be a proper sob. “I don’t want to do it again,” she whimpers. “Don’t make me, don’t make me do it again.”

And he… he knows exactly the voices she’s hearing, the voices that urged him to turn around, the ones he just barely managed to ignore (or did he? The thought is there and gone in a moment). He leans forward and presses his forehead to the top of her head, singing gently, trying to overpower them.

It doesn’t work at once, but eventually she manages to tear herself away from them enough to look at him. “It’s you,” she says, tear-choked and achingly  _ human _ .

“It’s me,” he tells her.

“Orpheus?”

“Eurydice.”

She throws her arms around his waist, buries her face in his chest. Sometimes he forgets just how  _ small _ she is. She’s all postures and squared shoulders and swagger, but there’s none of that in these moments when she lets him hold her.

“It’s over, right?” She’s still trembling against his chest, now, but it’s more subdued. “Orpheus. Please tell me it’s over.”

“It’s over,” he tells her on instinct, because he’d tell her anything in this moment, would tell her that the rivers would wash away and the trees would shield and the birds would fly down to take her nightmares if it would help her.

But he doesn’t say that. He speaks from his heart, because he’s pretty sure that knows exactly what Eurydice needs to hear. That  _ remembers _ , knew her from the moment he saw her there against the sky.

It knows why he can’t quite believe that they both made it out. It remembers all the times they didn’t.

“It’s over, Eurydice,” he tells her gently, stroking her hair. “We walked out. The workers followed. And then Spring came. It’s  _ Spring _ , Eurydice. The wall is gone and the world is back in tune. There’s nothing left to do.”

He keeps murmuring like that, soft and sweet as a lullaby, until she’s asleep in his arms again.

_ “I’ll tell you where the real road lies…” _

Eurydice is coping. And she’s doing a good job of it, he knows. Nights like that one are few and far between, and he can’t really think of her as weak because of them. He has his own nightmares to contend with, and she comforts him through them just as surely as he comforts her.

But, still. It hurts him to see her hurting, and… he gets the feeling that she  _ remembers _ , in a way that he doesn’t, with her head as well as her heart. It’s that look in her eyes, the one that reminds him of Hermes.

It’s Hermes he asks about it, first. The old god stands up to his full height, suit-vest glittering in the Spring sunlight. He looks over to where Persephone and Eurydice are laughing, Persephone teaching her some card game or another.

“She knows,” he says, simply.

Orpheus balls his hands into fists, not out of anger but nerves. “Is it… okay to talk about?”

He’s not even sure how he means that, and Hermes clearly knows that. He looks over at Orpheus with the dubious but fond look he reserves for him alone. “You’re not gonna throw the world back out of tune, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then why doesn’t she tell me?”

“Why do you wanna know?” Orpheus doesn’t have an answer for that. Not one Hermes could understand, anyway. Eventually the old god has pity on him, shaking his head. “She wants to tell you. But she’s scared. If you want an answer, Orpheus, you’re going to have to ask her.”

_ “Do you let me walk with you?” _

He wants to ask her. If she’s carrying a burden like what he suspects—what he knows, deep down in his heart—he doesn’t want her to have to carry that alone. Maybe he can’t fix everything for her like he sometimes still wants to do, but he can at least help. That’s what they do for each other, what they promised to do back in Hadestown.

Except he can’t find the words. It’s a problem he’s so rarely faced with, he doesn’t really know how to deal with it. He tries to dance around the subject, couches it in poetry until it’s incomprehensible and Eurydice can only look at him in confusion as he stumbles and stutters over his words.

He can’t start with the hard questions, but one sunny day, he figures out how to ask an easier one.

They’re with Achilles and Patriclus, two of the workers who followed them out of Hadestown and never went back. Orpheus and Eurydice are sitting on a blanket while the other two lovers walk together, hand in hand through the flowers. Eurydice watches them with a fond smile, her fingers tangled with Orpheus’s.

“Were you friends with them, at the beginning?” Orpheus asks gently.

Eurydice startles, looking up at him. Finally, she shakes her head. “No,” she says. “The first… in the beginning, they wouldn’t even look at me.”

He hears some reproach in her voice but he’s pretty sure he’s imagining it, an echo of the fates mocking in the back of his head.  _ You wouldn’t look at her, either. So she left. _ He squeezes her hand and she brings his knuckles to her lips as if she knows what he’s thinking.

“What happened?”

“It changed,” Eurydice replies simply. “Slowly. But it changed.” Her eyes go distant, but not in the worrying way they sometimes do. “It started with a look. Then, names. Then, stories. It took them a while to remember who they were.”

He smiles at her. “You helped them.” He might have been the final piece to setting the world back into tune, but she was the one who made sure  _ everyone _ would be able to enjoy it.

Eurydice smiles, oddly bashful. “It was a group effort.”

He holds her close. “I can’t wait to call you my wife.”

_ “The trees are gonna lay the wedding table…” _

They’re married before spring is out. Neither of them really wants to wait. It’s a quiet affair, with Hermes officiating and Persephone providing food and drink, a few regulars from the bar and only the workers from Hadestown that Eurydice considered friends--Medusa, Achilles and Patriclus, to name a few. All of them would have showed up, but both of them agreed that this should be about them as  _ people _ , not as the songbird and poet that set the world back into tune.

The only reference to that song was an archway of magical red flowers above them. He’d offered to sing them the way he sang the bouquet for her to hold, but Eurydice had shaken her head. “We already have them.” And she’d led him to the old railroad track, where so many red flowers still littered the ground. He remembered them swirling around, when they first walked out of Hadestown.

“Why did you want them there?” he asks her, later.

Eurydice looks off to the train tracks, where Persephone is talking with Medusa. The former shade would be heading back to Hadestown soon, by choice. Orpheus doesn’t really understand it, but she returns topside regularly and brings up fresh food to fill their pantries, so he can’t really complain. Persephone’s staying, and that’s the important thing.

“It’s a reminder,” Eurydice says, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“A reminder of what?”

“Of what it took to get us here.” She holds her bouquet of red flowers close to her chest--new ones, brighter than the ones that had sat overhead as they were married. “Just like these are a reminder of what makes it worth it.”

He gets the feeling that he could ask, now. But he doesn’t want to ruin the happiness of the moment. So instead, he smiles at her. “I love you, my wife.”

“I love you too, my husband.”

_ “The dog you really gotta dread is the one that howls inside your head…” _

He dreams of turning.

She’s there, she’s always there, in the shade, unreachable forever. Her face doubles, triples, not unlike the voices howling in his ears. All of her eyes have tears in them. The first face is in abject misery.  _ “It’s me,” _ she sobs. The second is furious.  _ “You’re early,” _ she snarls. The third is smiling even as the tears trickle down.

_ “We’re gonna sing it again,” _ she promises.

He wakes with the fates still laughing and her voice ringing out those three phrases over and over, cascading, countless failed attempts ripping through him. He sits up and clutches at his chest, trying and failing to still the rasp of his breathing, quiet the twisting of his heart.

Eurydice shifts beside him. “Orpheus,” she slurs, still half-asleep. Then, “Orpheus,” more firm, full of concern.

He reaches for her before he can decide if he deserves it, and she holds him, curls up soft and warm and trusting against his chest.

“How can you do this?” He can hardly draw the breath to ask her. He doesn’t understand how she can let herself be like this with him, when she knows he’s not worthy, that he couldn’t do right by her, when she watched him with those tear-filled eyes again and again.

“What do you mean?” She’s stroking his spine gently. Her voice is understanding and soft in the way it only gets when he’s like this, and he doesn’t deserve it, he doesn’t, he doesn’t.

“How many times did I fail you, Eurydice?” he asks. “How many times did I turn around?”

Her hand stills. But only for a moment. Then she’s cupping his face in both of her hands, forcing him to look at her, forcing his gaze to meet her stern one.

“You turned,” she said, “As many times as I went down to Hadestown.”

“That’s different,” he says, and perhaps he sounds a bit like a petulant child. But it is. Somewhere deep down in him, he knows it is, and that’s the thing that tears at him. “You didn’t have a choice. I did.”

“You needed to,” Eurydice replies, firm. “That’s how it had to be. Besides, you got it right in the end. I’m here now. That’s all I care about.”

“Eurydice.” He grips her by the shoulders, as gentle as he can manage. “How many times?”

Eurydice studies his face. Sighs, and finally drops her gaze. “One for every flower.”

“Every… what?” Realization creeps in slowly, as he remembers the flowers twined together in the archway, really only a fraction of the flowers that had been left in the train station, the ones that had greeted them at the end of their journey. Hundreds of red flowers, too many to count. “Oh, Eurydice… no…”

He breaks, then, sobs into her shoulder and apologizes. And she just holds him, like he’s worth it, like he’s worthy of her.

When he finally quiets, she still holds him, strokes his hair. “I wish I could explain it to you in a way that makes it make sense,” she says quietly. “A way that makes it better. But I don’t have the way with words that you do, my poet.” She kisses him gently, then, never minding the taste of his tears. “I fell in love with you every time.”

“Every time?”

“Like clockwork.” Eurydice smiles gently at him. “I had my own journey to go through, Orpheus. I had to learn so much, and so did you. But we did it, and we’re here now. Together.”

He doesn’t understand. But he doesn’t think Eurydice does, either. So he offers her a watery smile. “Can’t promise you fair sky above,” he tells her.

She smiles, cupping his cheek. “Can’t promise you, kind roads below.”

They bow their foreheads together and sing together. Outside, the sun begins to rise, bright and warm, to usher in the first day of summer.

_ “I’ll walk beside you, love, anyway the wind blows.” _


End file.
